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I was among 1,500 marketers that descended upon Cleveland for this year’s MAICON event, one of the leading AI & Marketing gatherings in the U.S. After two jam-packed days in an AI fishbowl, here are five takeaways that have stayed with me:
1) “AI Slop” is a Flawed Term
This term has gained popularity recently as a way to describe the flood of low quality, AI-generated content that fills our social media feeds and is in every corner of the web. Written content is the most prevalent kind of slop – think bland, light-hitting blog posts that lack specificity or a point of view – but there’s plenty of it in the image and video realm too. I think the term is popular because it makes us feel better about a perceived ceiling of AI’s capabilities. But I left with a different take – we need to stop blaming the LLMs and AI models. “AI slop” is almost always the result of a lack of context given by humans in the first place, and certainly a lack of refinement by humans after AI’s initial output. Essentially, it’s just a new version of “quantity over quality” that has plagued content marketing since long before AI came around. The incredible efficiency gains AI tools offer need to be balanced with thoughtful context up front and strategic refinement and iteration.
2) Use AI as a Thought Partner
A number of sessions focused on a similar theme – using AI tools as a thought partner as opposed to simply a search engine, or a way to execute a task. Much in the way you might consult with a colleague about marketing budget allocation, email campaign strategy, or even an interpersonal conflict hampering your team, AI models are increasingly helpful when used in this way. You can bounce ideas off them for immediate feedback, or prompt it to ask you questions to get to a better outcome. As always, it’s up to you to decide if the output is of value, but at a minimum you’ll likely emerge with new considerations you didn’t have, or a new approach to solving your marketing challenges.
3) “Knowledge” vs “Wisdom” as it Relates to AI
I loved a quote that was shared regarding knowledge vs. wisdom – “knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad”. There’s a clear thread to LLMs and AI models if you ponder that – they all have infinite knowledge, but it’s the wisdom they sometimes lack, especially if we don’t give them sufficient context. This underscores why anything that AI produces can only be helpful when paired with the discernment and wisdom of humans.
4) Democratization of Video Generation
All of AI seems to be advancing at lightning speed, but the most memorable demos I saw were in video generation, where widely available tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3 have made AI-generated video remarkably more realistic than ever before. It’s getting very hard to decipher traditionally shot & produced videos from AI-generated ones, and brands are leveraging these tools to produce video content faster and cheaper than ever before. Cost has long been prohibitive for smaller brands with smaller budgets to produce quality video content, but AI is helping to level the playing field in a way I didn’t predict even a year or two ago.
5) “Be Seen. Be Believed. Be Chosen.”
AI has caused a lot of upheaval in the digital marketing space, and upheaval can cause headaches. I think most marketers can relate to the dueling feelings of inspiration and doom as AI becomes more and more ingrained in our daily workflows. With rapid change being a constant, I find solace in grounding what we do for our clients in this simple goal, delightfully unchanged since even the pre-internet days of marketing: Be seen. Be believed. Be chosen.